Well that’s what I said, and it’s why I think his article paints the wrong picture. But clearly, certain things didn’t have enough progress (up to that minimum level of the art form I mentioned) for him personally.
Enidigm
5002
I don’t have a problem with Tom’s review this time, though i wonder if he understands that the brittleness is a feature. The ability to have an open world game, and with one that has (generally) three main “Schools” of resolutions, is one that generally doesn’t do specific details very well and is far more susceptible to breaking.
Saints Row 3? A great open world, and it has many more activities (that are fun, enjoyable, and consequence free, such as driving a Tank (!?) down Main Street randomly shooting things). But aside from emergent auto related chaos, there aren’t “multiple” solutions to the missions, nor does the world react to you (much) aside from triggering various violations. It’s a smaller, more refined, GTA4, with a heavy dose of sillyness.
KWhit
5003
Yes, but anyone who thinks Skyrim doesn’t meet the minimum level of the art form in any aspect is kind of nuts.
In that post about Oblivion, he said he lost interest once he saw behind the curtain. The illusion broke. Maybe he got his hopes up early in Skyrim and couldn’t cope when the little flaws appeared. So yes, he’s criticizing the game from his personal context.
Funny. People talking about Tom’s review and how harsh it is.
Meanwhile, on largest czech gaming website, yesterday they published an article written by Dan Vavra (lead designer and writer of Mafia 1 and 2 and few unnanounced titles, who now works on medieval RPG in newly formed Warhorse Studios) titled:
“100+ reasons why Dan Vávra hates Skyrim” ( http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=cs&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fgames.tiscali.cz%2Ftema%2F100-duvodu-proc-dan-vavra-nesnasi-tes-v-skyrim-57711 )
And he literally writes 116 reasons why the game pissed him off :-)
The ammount of comments in 1 day ? 2350!
Now THAT is a masterful troll article, even if he means it :)
Fair enough. But I can think of one reason why Mafia 1 is one of the worst games I’ve ever played: goddamn checkpoint saves. So that man is dead to me.
Fuck, now I’m pissed off just thinking about that shitty game.
Hah, I had no problem with checkpoint or difficulty (played patched version) so I rightfully consider it one of the best games ever :-). He is a good designer, but that article is just mostly trolling and being pissed off because the game froze his xbox often.
That’s actually a pretty valid complaint. Why tell me the spell only works on an enemy of level X, then never let me see the enemy’s level?
As for Tom’s review, I think it’s fair if you place the same importance on everything in a game working together to present a unified experience. We who are loving Skyrim do so because the emergent gameplay is engaging and gets hilariously better when things go wrong. If you don’t find that kind of thing appealing, then yeah, things not working right or being at odds with the tone of the game will knock a few points off for you.
For example, in Saints Row 3, everything in that game, from start to finish, is in service of letting gamers act like the biggest jerk in a violently funny cartoon. You can beat people with a giant dildo. Costumed furries walk the streets at all hours. Invulnerability and unlimited ammo can be yours very quickly. There is no such thing as too much stuff. SR3 makes you the lovechild of Tex Avery and Ron Jeremy.
I like SR3, but I’m having a lot more fun in Skyrim because goofing off and fooling around actually feels like that in relation to the normal game. It’s funny to see things behave or interact in ways that I (and probably the game designers) didn’t expect. I value that stuff in Bethesda games.
kerzain
5009
Skyrim just happens to be one of those rare games that remains exceedingly brilliant and fun despite all the stupid technical and ridiculous interface issues that have persisted for the last few weeks. Typically issues like that will ruin the game for me faster than you can say sticky cover system, but in this case I’m so enamored by the whole experience that all the glaring bugs and issues playing interference between the game and I are doing a very poor job of keeping all that brilliance from getting through to me.
I certainly want all this stuff fixed, but to me actions speak louder than words; and judging by the time I’ve put into this game so far, my actions indicate the game really, really works for me as-is.
So why peek behind the curtain? Why not just enjoy the illusion as it is? Why nitpick everything?
We all know that magic shows are just tricks and sleight of hands but we sit down and enjoy the performance as it is. If you start questioning every little thing behind the curtain, the illusion will surely break. And you end up a crochety guy who rolls his eyes every single time.
JM1
5011
I love this game but melee combat is comfortably described as “flailing” when you’re trying to land power attacks with a 2-hander. There’s a lack of control both over the attack and your own movement. It still doesn’t feel quite right and has been the case for several games now.
It’s a little bit impossible not to see behind the curtain in some regards. For instance, I wasn’t trying to discover that enemy mobs are tethered to geography, but I did.
The difference for me is that I’ve enjoyed yo-yo murdering bears that I otherwise would not be able to face down because I apparently did my character super duper wrong. In a weird way, I feel kind of like I’m SUPPOSED to be doing this. I don’t mind the shortcomings because I am entirely wrapped up with the absolutely obscene amount of detail to explore, and the corresponding gigantic pile of quests that pull me off to do just that. If, for any reason, I wasn’t digging the environment, the cast (every character is the pseudo-villain from Hell on Wheels), or the story, I could easily nitpick the game to death. Any game with this many moving parts is going to have that issue.
Edit: And yes, the melee combat is incredibly…let’s generously call it imprecise. Maybe it’s better in third person, but I’m at the point where I try to draw people into hallways just so that I can know for sure that I’ll hit them when I swing at them. That’s also, I suspect, why I tend to prefer bows and magic, because it works just fine at range.
I think the point is that Skyrim doesn’t particularly use the curtain well. If a magician constantly drops the top hat and fumbles the cards, I think it’s fair to say that some audience members won’t find the act nearly as engaging.
Just so we can get out of the tortured analogies, let’s put it a different way. Skyrim doesn’t always do a great job of hiding it’s flaws. Some of us can overlook them. Some of us like it even more because of the flaws that allow crazy things to happen. Some people just can’t help but be bothered by them.
Maybe I’m biased because they don’t bother me, but I don’t think we should let this narrative get out of control. It’s surprising how well they’ve hid so many flaws from Oblivion. There are still cracks, but I don’t think this will be a game anyone needs to apologize for over and over.
I realize you’re not doing this. I’m just using your post as a useful example.
Presumably the designers of Mafia II’s ‘open world’ fired up Skyrim and had some kind of seizure.
I’m using a war axe and shield and not any two-handed weapons. I find the melee combat to be a lot of fun, and a big step up from Oblivion. Not perfect, but I never feel like I’m flailing or get the sense that anything is imprecise.
What’s your approach? Because I’d genuinely like to feel as if I had control in a hand-to-hand situation. My problem is that in any kind of open area, there’s so much room for enemies to move laterally (and they do), that it’s kind of troublesome to keep one target in front of me for any amount of time. The result is that I end up whiffing on a lot of my power attacks, which I try to use strategically the way the game seems to want me to, but I have a hard time lining the hitbox up properly while I’m bobbing in and out the way the game also seems to want me to.
Maybe it’s more a problem on controller. Or maybe I just have terrible reflexes.
If you’re lifting a big two handed weapon over your head and trying to put everything into your attack, you’re going to flail if you miss. Skyrim is pretty realistic in that way.
JM1
5019
It feels like flailing even if I hit. And it’s very easy to miss regardless of player skill, because it’s clunky as hell.
That’s entirely reasonable. But the problems with Tom’s review are really twofold:
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No specific examples. What does he mean that the game is “profoundly broken”? What does he mean when the game is “brittle”? What does he mean when he says stealth is “contrived”? Beyond the interface, there are no examples provided, leaving the reader confused as to what he didn’t like.
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Tom is already on the record for having praised Oblivion and it’s obvious that Skyrim is a marked upgrade in nearly every way to Oblivion - including in the areas he mentioned. It’s inconsistent to say that Oblivion deserves a 90 (the Metacritic score) and then give Skyrim a 70 when the very (generic) reasons cited as negatives were unchanged or improved. It’s not like we’re even dealing with different eras in computer games since Oblivion is only 5 years old.
When you look at points #1 and #2 and combine that with Tom’s track record of being contrary (to be kind) on many big-budget releases, then it’s easy to write off his opinion as just “that’s Tom being Tom”. I’m not so sure that’s a good thing for a professional reviewer. That’s all.
